Thanks Chas! I turned off top-sites when I first got my Mac and it has been turned off since (never liked that feature). However, I once again started to use Safari today, just to see if it is still the frustration that it used to be. Well, an hour into it now and it beachballed only once on me, when I clicked on the link in the thread about the big boulder crushing a car and someone's home in Ohio. But that did not crash the whole browser, it beachballed for a while and then the site finally loaded and I was able to click elsewhere agin after that.

While I don't think I can help you with that problem, I'm glad you seem to be aware that this is not the typical Safari experience. If you can, you might try turning off "top sites," that might be the source of the issue (older versions of Safari could occasionally corrupt the "Top Sites" db, causing many of the symptoms you describe).

Just curious and I would love to know how and where to turn Off Top Sites, ie: so they don't keep getting downloaded or added except perhaps using "Private Browsing". SL 10.6.8.

I managed to with Leopard by changing the write permissions on the, I believe the folder: ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Webpage\ Previews directory